Representation/Sexual Exploitation In the Media

[Slog Bait]

Is it the phrasing?

Yes, the phrasing implies that people with penises are not women

While in many cases this is true it completely neglects pre-op transwomen and many intersex individuals

[Phylum]

Maybe I'm just more used to Mac being a constant string of hyperbole.

[Mac Sirloin]

I think you people know me well enough not to hate-puke on people for their sexuality, whether deliberately or by happenstance. Unless what they're attracted to doesn't make any physical sense. Like those people who stick fire ants into their genitals. My point is that Men and Women both enjoy terrible things equally, nothing else. I am not ragging on transexuals, transplants, or transmissions of any kind.

[Slog Bait]

Mac, not only is Job still RELATIVELY new to the forum, but you kind of missed the point

We know you didn't mean any offense and weren't attacking anyone, but the fact is you caused offense with your phrasing to someone who can be harassed with that exact phrasing. Live and learn

[Mac Sirloin]

Caused offence? I think given that Job already misinterpreted another post of mine the problem might lie with her having sought offence without actually thinking about what I was saying in my post. As Phylum says, I am an almost neverending stream of hyperbole (and graphic bodily-fluid focused imagery) If the (believe it's fair to say) consistently sarcastic tone of what I say is lost on Job I don't feel obligated to ensure my phrasing is completely inoffensive in the future. What's the point of saying anything if you must ensure it doesn't incidentally offend someone?

I'm not eschewing accountability here; I just don't care all that hard.

EDIT: Woah now Slog Bait! You can try messaging me before you start giving me negrep for spelling errors buddy. Or you know, just staying clear of me altogether.

[Job McYossie]

Guys, please, can we go back to arguing about the topic?

[Wings of Fire]

The audience also includes adult males. I could be wrong on that though.

Periphery demographics are healthy. If a kids show has adult appeal it's usually well constructed and written. It's very true the genre has a sizable adult male demographic (And I'm only talking about things primarily aimed at little girls to sell merchandise. No Nanoha, Madoka or Vividred [Though you'd be surprised how popular Madoka is with women]), but it's also true that sentai shows have a large adult female demographic. Women love adventures and fighting just as much as men.

Also Book 3 of Korra is just meh, but I can't see why anyone liked Book 2. It's atrocious.

[Manco]

You talk as if film makers have some reactionary agenda.

Usually it's just ignorance or lack of thought, but sometimes people have an agenda they want to push in the media. Maybe less so in film, but certainly in other areas.

No one is saying that current gender roles have to be reflected in fiction, but they undoubtedly have an influence on it. When people write gangsters, or secret agents, or soldiers, or whatever, do you think the fact that they are more likely to make them male is due to some desire for the status quo, or because their perceptions of such people are shaped by reality?

Yes, current gender roles have an influence on what film makers and others in the media show in their work. I'm arguing that the gender representation in fiction also goes back and reinforces people's views on gender roles, often detrimentally. Creators of fiction have ample opportunity to challenge those views, yet they rarely do - this is probably down to their perceptions, yes, but it can also show outdated views. Look at how male-oriented video games are, despite statistics consistently showing roughly half of the audience for video games is female; and the previously mentioned stats about women being half of the audience for action movies.

It's little more than a century since women's suffrage? Social change happens slowly? Whatever it is, it's probably a bit more complex than 'duh media'.

Of course, but it's a factor, and shouldn't be ignored.

[Bullet Magnet]

You talk as if film makers have some reactionary agenda. No one is saying that current gender roles have to be reflected in fiction, but they undoubtedly have an influence on it. When people write gangsters, or secret agents, or soldiers, or whatever, do you think the fact that they are more likely to make them male is due to some desire for the status quo, or because their perceptions of such people are shaped by reality?

When it's fiction, all bets are off. If you make a decision to do the same old thing with gender roles or even representation minorities, it's all on you. It's fiction! So you have the choice to stick old assumptions and prejudices in it or not.

Furthermore, the justification of "reality" or "history" is predicated on the author actually knowing anything about the real world or history, and I mean real history, not the incomplete school curriculum or the "common knowledge" we pick up from each other and the media. Women have always fought. Non-whites have always lived and worked in Europe. There is a wealth of participation and contribution to history and the modern world by every disadvantaged group that we don't know about, not because it's unknown to history but because no one has seen fit to educate us. There are so many stories left completely untold, brilliant narratives from real life and history that have yet to hit the pages of modern works, and ways to depict these groups of people in both realistic and historically accurate ways that we are no seeing because our assumptions about their historical roles are all absurdly wrong.

Which makes the constant rehashing and spoonfeeding of the same old stories and tropes even more insulting, just as a consumer of them.